The genetics of Mexico recapitulates Native American substructure and affects biomedical traits – “We studied genomic variation within Mexico from over 1000 individuals representing 20 indigenous and 11 mestizo populations. We found striking genetic stratification among indigenous populations within Mexico at varying degrees of geographic isolation. Some groups were as differentiated as Europeans are from East Asians. Pre-Columbian genetic substructure is recapitulated in the indigenous ancestry of admixed mestizo individuals across the country. Furthermore, two independently phenotyped cohorts of Mexicans and Mexican Americans showed a significant association between subcontinental ancestry and lung function. Thus, accounting for fine-scale ancestry patterns is critical for medical and population genetic studies within Mexico, in Mexican-descent populations, and likely in many other populations worldwide.” – see also: People from Mexico show stunning amount of genetic diversity – “When the team analyzed the genomes of 511 indigenous individuals from all over Mexico, they found a striking amount of genetic diversity. The most divergent indigenous groups in Mexico are as different from each other as Europeans are from East Asians, they report online today in Science. This diversity maps onto the geography of Mexico itself. The farther away ethnic groups live from each other, the more different their genomes turn out to be…. But most people in Mexico or of Mexican descent these days are not indigenous but rather mestizo, meaning they have a mixture of indigenous, European, and African ancestry. Do their genomes also vary by what region of Mexico they come from, or has all that local variation been smoothed out by centuries of different groups meeting, mixing, and having babies? To answer that question, the team collaborated with Mexico’s National Institute of Genomic Medicine, which has been collecting genetic data from mestizos for many years. Somewhat surprisingly, they found that mestizos in a given part of Mexico tended to have the same ‘rare’ genetic variants as their indigenous neighbors. The mestizo genomes ‘track so well with the indigenous groups that we could use the genetic diversity in mestizos to make inferences about [their native] ancestors,’ Pasaniuc says.”

Neanderthal-Human Skulls Shed Light on Evolution – “Skulls found in a Spanish cave exhibit both Neanderthal and primitive human features, according to a new study published in the journal Science. The discovery provides clues about when the common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals lived, what happened after the two groups diverged, and how the two became so different over a relatively short period of time. There is consensus about the ending of the story: Modern humans and Neanderthals interbred, and Neanderthal DNA is still present in people of European and Asian ancestry. But the thousands of years before they connected, however, have been a mystery.” – see also: Palaeontology: How Neanderthals evolved – “A study reveals that not all distinguishing features of hominid skulls have evolved at the same pace.”

Island-hopping odyssey brought civilisation to Europe – “The farmers who brought advanced civilisation to Europe got there by sailing between the many islands strewn across the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey, according to a new genetic analysis. The first modern humans in Europe were hunter-gatherers who arrived around 40,000 years ago. But around 9000 years ago the first farmers arrived. They spread rapidly, dominating the continent by 7500 years ago, and pushing the hunter-gatherers into decline. The farmers originated in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, where farming arose, but until now no one knew which route they took to get to Europe.” – see also Publication Delays from greg cochran.

The population genomic landscape of human genetic structure, admixture history and local adaptation in Peninsular Malaysia – “Peninsular Malaysia has greater genetic diversity corresponding to its role as a contact zone of both early and recent human migrations in Asia. However, each single Orang Asli (indigenous) group was less diverse with a smaller effective population size (Ne) than a European or an East Asian population, indicating a substantial isolation of some duration for these groups. All four MEGs were genetically more similar to Asian populations than to other continental groups, and the divergence time between MEGs and East Asian populations (12,000—6,000 years ago) was also much shorter than that between East Asians and Europeans. Thus, Malaysian Orang Asli groups, despite their significantly different features, may share a common origin with the other Asian groups. Nevertheless, we identified traces of recent gene flow from non-Asians to MEGs. Finally, natural selection signatures were detected in a batch of genes associated with immune response, human height, skin pigmentation, hair and facial morphology and blood pressure in MEGs. Notable examples include SYN3 which is associated with human height in all Orang Asli groups, a height-related gene (PNPT1) and two blood pressure-related genes (CDH13 and PAX5) in Negritos. We conclude that a long isolation period, subsequent gene flow and local adaptations have jointly shaped the genetic architectures of MEGs, and this study provides insight into the peopling and human migration history in Southeast Asia.”

Race a factor in mortality in heart attack patients on anti-clotting drug – “The first genetic variations linked to race have been identified that begin to explain a higher risk of death among some African American and Caucasian patients taking the anti-clotting drug clopidogrel after a heart attack. In particular, the team found that two DNA variants common in African Americans were associated with an increased risk of both bleeding and death. In Caucasians, a different variant was linked to additional heart attacks and a higher risk of death.” – h/t hbd bibliography!

A hair-color allele of Neanderthal origin? – “60-70% of Taiwanese aborigines have a loss-of-function allele at the main hair color gene, MC1R, yet their hair is as black as humans with the original ‘African’ allele. This seems to be a general pattern in Asians. They have fewer MC1R alleles than do Europeans, and the ones they have produce the same hair color.” – from peter frost.

How universal is empathy? – “Pro-social behavior seems to be a human universal, but is the same true for full empathy?” – from peter frost.

Woodley launches his Victorian defence – “The Woodley gang argue that, once they have done a complete re-analysis to respond to the points raised against their original ‘Victorians’ paper, their new results ‘reveal a seemingly robust secular trend towards slowing reaction time in these two countries, which translates into a potential dysgenics rate of −1.21 IQ points per decade, or −13.9 points in total between 1889 and 2004. We conclude by arguing that the best way forward is to test novel predictions stemming from our finding relating to molecular genetics, neurophysiology and alternative cognitive indicators, thus shifting the research focus away from the purely methodological level towards the broader nomological level. We thank our critics for helping us to arrive at a much more precise estimate of the decline in general intelligence.'” – @dr. james thompson’s blog.

Criminal offending as part of an alternative reproductive strategy: Investigating evolutionary hypotheses using Swedish total population data – “Convicted criminal offenders had more children than individuals never convicted of a criminal offense. Criminal offenders also had more reproductive partners, were less often married, more likely to get remarried if ever married, and had more often contracted a sexually transmitted disease than non-offenders. Importantly, the increased reproductive success of criminals was explained by a fertility increase from having children with several different partners. We conclude that criminality appears to be adaptive in a contemporary industrialized country, and that this association can be explained by antisocial behavior being part of an adaptive alternative reproductive strategy.” – h/t mary lou cowan! – chicks dig jerks. – see also You dropped your glove, my liege from the awesome epigone.

For The First Time, Chimpanzees Are Making A Fashion Statement — Sticking Blades Of Grass In Their Ears – “It’s a trend that’s taken a troop of chimpanzees by storm: a blade of grass dangling from an ear. The “grass-in-ear behavior,” as scientists have termed it, seems to be one of the first times that chimpanzees have created a tradition with no discernible purpose — a primate fashion statement, in other words…. There’s no genetic or ecological factors, the scientists believe, that would account for this behavior — only culture.” – but, but, but…where does chimp culture come from?

Sensitive? Emotional? Empathetic? It could be in your genes – “Do you jump to help the less fortunate or cry during sad movie scenes? If yes, you may be among the 20 percent of our population that is genetically pre-disposed to empathy, according to a study. The results provide further evidence that highly sensitive people are generally highly tuned into their environment, and provide evidence that especially high levels of awareness and emotional responsiveness are fundamental features of humans characterized as HSPs.” – h/t mr. robert ford!

The Little Divergence – “A ‘great divergence’ between the economies of Western Europe and East Asia had unambiguously occurred by 1800. However, there’s a growing body of opinion that this was preceded by a ‘little divergence’ which might have started as early as 1200. I argue that the pre-modern ‘little divergence’ was probably real, but that doesn’t mean it happened because of a modern growth process — a sustained rise in the production efficiency of the divergent economies. The ‘little divergence’ might be only a reflexion of those societies’ Malthusian balance of natality and mortality.” – from pseudo. – see also Addendum to The Little Divergence.

Searching for the “Free Will” Neuron – “Gabriel Kreiman’s single-neuron measurements of unconscious decision-making may not topple Descartes, but they could someday point to ways we can learn to control ourselves.”

Mike Lotus Meeting with Emmanuel Todd in Paris, Discussing Todd’s Current Work and America 3.0 – “Todd spoke about the origins of the Absolute Nuclear Family, as contrasted with the Community Family which predominates in much of Eurasia. Todd said that his most recent book, ‘L’Origine des systemes familiaux’ he shows that the entire history of the world is understood backward. Specifically, the supposedly most backward places are the most advanced. He told me that he had made an absurd mistake in his early book The Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure and Social Systems. He said in Explanation that the distribution of family systems appeared to be random. But, he said, he should have realized that this could not be correct. He took out a pile of printer paper and with rapid strokes sketched an oval and filled in the center, noting that this was the community family area. It was a given that I understood that the oval was Eurasia. He then marked Xs around the periphery for England, Iceland, Finland, France, Japan, Korea, the Philippines all areas which were still individualistic in family structure. He said the book articulates the ‘Principle of Peripheral Conservation.’ The oldest known family structure is the Undifferentiated Nuclear Family (UNF). In England the UNF evolved into the ANF over many centuries. The Community Family forms took four to five thousand years to form and to reach their current state of development. In particular the subjugation of women took a very long time to complete in these systems. In other words, the societies which are currently considered the most modern have as a foundation an archaic family structure.” – h/t t.greer!

Understanding current causes of women’s underrepresentation in science – “[D]ifferential gendered outcomes in the real world result from differences in resources attributable to choices, whether free or constrained, and that such choices could be influenced and better informed through education if resources were so directed. Thus, the ongoing focus on sex discrimination in reviewing, interviewing, and hiring represents costly, misplaced effort: Society is engaged in the present in solving problems of the past, rather than in addressing meaningful limitations deterring women’s participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers today.”

Archaeological cave dig unearths artefacts from 45,000 years ago – “An archeological dig has revealed artefacts of early occupation so old they rival the dates of those found at sites of the earliest human settlement in Australia. The discovery of the artefacts of animal bone and charcoal at the Ganga Maya Cave (named by traditional owners meaning ‘house on the hill’) in the Pilbara region of Western Australia are the subject of a scientific paper not yet submitted to archaeological journals.”

Researchers discover 6,200-year-old schistosomiasis parasite egg – “Researchers have discovered what they believe is the oldest ever schistosomiasis parasite egg in a 6,200-year-old grave by the Euphrates river in Syria, potentially providing the first evidence that Middle East agricultural irrigation systems – the artificial application of water to land or soil – may have contributed to the schistosomiasis burden.” – d*mn agriculture! – h/t adam benton @evoanth!

bonus: Assessment of Genetic Variability of Fish Personality Traits using Rainbow Trout Isogenic Lines – “The study of inter-individual variability of personality in fish is a growing field of interest but the genetic basis of this complex trait is still poorly investigated due to the difficulty in controlling fish genetic origin and life history…. To this end, seven to ten rainbow trout isogenic lines were screened for their spatial exploratory behaviour, their flight response toward a stressor and their risk taking behaviour. Results showed that some lines seemed less sensitive to new events or environmental changes and could be defined as low responsive, while others were very sensitive and defined as high responsive.” – h/t justin tiehen!

bonus bonus bonus: H. pylori Bacteria Frantically Mutate to Establish Infection – “A burst of rapid evolution allows Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium that causes ulcers in humans, to evade the immune system during the early, acute phase of infection. This finding complements earlier work that quantified how quickly H. pylori mutations accumulate during chronic infection. During the acute phase, mutational rates are 30 to 50 times greater than during the chronic phase.”

apart from vindication all these medical links are pretty cool in themselves

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“We conclude that criminality appears to be adaptive in a contemporary industrialized country, and that this association can be explained by antisocial behavior being part of an adaptive alternative reproductive strategy.”

I think this changed with the 60s. Full employment policies combined with a harsh criminal justice system had squeezed this niche to its minimum but the creation of an artificial labor surplus (via immigration and off shoring) combined with a relaxation in criminal justice expanded it again.

I’d say the effect described is particularly magnified with criminals involved in street gang as a street gang is effectively a conspiracy among the most violent males in an area to have first crack at all the girls coming up in their area.

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“f yes, you may be among the 20 percent of our population that is genetically pre-disposed to empathy, according to a study.”

Pathway analysis, using genes selected on the basis of relaxed criteria, revealed notable differences between these two traits. gF appeared to be characterized by genes affecting the quantity and quality of neurons and therefore neuronal efficiency, whereas long term depression (LTD) seemed to underlie gC.

This stuff is interesting to me in particular because under normal models of gC and gF, gC is simply what happens when you expose a person with gF to high levels of education and information.

This indicates not the case, and gC perhaps relates to a different (better but depressed mood?) structure of information processing while gF is more “brute” neurological quality and efficiency.

Be interesting if they find different genetic correlates for gV (visual processing ability), gLR (long term storage and retrieval) etc. A lot of current thinking again has been that these reflect environmentally stimulated different routes for the same underlying genetic variance.

andrew “the goth” sabisky on the pisa tests/scores and their implications for education.

On the UK specifically, in the UK there is such a major large city effect (the “London effect”) that, when we look at the same social status, non-asian inner city minorities actually slightly outperform whites from the regions in terms of GCSE courses and so on (which are of course a bit more trainable than cognitive ability tests, but still cognitively loaded).

This has led to much silly ink being spilled in the UK over the culture of achievement of minorities (even seeing minorities as a cause of the London effect), despite the fact that it really only occurs within the same SES class (itself a proxy for IQ) and there is a SES gap and that this is really mainly a big city effect.

With this, of course, the real boost for Asian Americans is on maths. So when we’re talking about greater Asian American effort leading to greater outcomes, we’re really talking about Asians bothering with maths where other groups get scared or bored away, and so getting a boost that way, by applying cognitive ability to an area where most just don’t bother to learn.

That is, we are, perhaps, talking about simulated “aspiedom”.

I wonder, is it as “good” as the real thing? Probably or even better for many purposes, but maybe not for some others.

The Little Divergence – “A ‘great divergence’ between the economies of Western Europe and East Asia had unambiguously occurred by 1800. However, there’s a growing body of opinion that this was preceded by a ‘little divergence’ which might have started as early as 1200…The ‘little divergence’ might be only a reflexion of those societies’ Malthusian balance of natality and mortality.

On perhaps a similar note, comparing India’s share of world trade, reductions in the scale of India’s share of world textile trades precede colonisation. Yet that was due to the internal dynamics of their agricultural society, not due to production improvements elsewhere.

The population genomic landscape of human genetic structure, admixture history and local adaptation in Peninsular Malaysia … Nevertheless, we identified traces of recent gene flow from non-Asians to MEGs. Finally, natural selection signatures were detected in a batch of genes associated with immune response, human height, skin pigmentation, hair and facial morphology and blood pressure in MEGs.

I don’t know if it’s ever been clear whether teh Orang Asli were ancestral or admixed, yet in either case, this points out the utility of these kind of closely related, yet environmentally divergent populations in detecting what is selected in particular “East Asian” (for example” environments compared to what is generalised or neutral about the group.

“In other words, the societies which are currently considered the most modern have as a foundation an archaic family structure.” – h/t t.greer!”

I’ve always found it interesting that the form of the family hinted at in the Adam and Eve story is matrilocal (“therefore shall a man leave his family and they shall become one flesh”) which is typical of early horticultural societies. While not nuclear, matrilocal families seem fundamentally different in ethos from patrilocal, regarding the status of women in particular (much higher). You see this in the relative frequency of female goddesses for example, and in what we know about the Iroquois. There was relative equality before the Fall.

“People from Mexico show a stunning amount of genetic diversity”
I looked at data on HLA B alleles in the Mixtecs (a high resolution typed sample).
Several alleles from that population, some very high in frequency, appear to have actually arisen in Mixtecs (being at peak world frequency in that population), or in other native Mexican or native South American populations. There are a surprising number of newly derived variants without Old World homologues. So the conclusion appears to be correct, there is tremendous genetic diversity in Mexicans.

In other words, men’s personalities are more likely to confer an aptitude for and interest in “nuts and bolts” activities; women’s personalities are more likely to give them aptitude/interest in activities with a social dimension.

Nobody worries if women are under-represented in model railway clubs, steam preservation societies, or lathe ownership. Nobody would be foolish enough to suggest that there is a sexist conspiracy to exclude women from these activities. Yet the underlying mechanism is the same as for participation in STEM education and careers.